How do I build an email template? – RaiseDonors by Virtuous

As an admin, you're able to control the types of emails and the content of those emails that RD sends to your donors. Thank You emails, various Recurring Donation emails, Tribute Gifts, and Upcoming Payment emails are all options you can enable and customize.

Article Table of Contents

Email Builder

Locate the Email Builder in the main side menu. Start by choosing what type of email template you want to create.

Choose from a variety of templates depending on what the email is going to be used for:

Donation Confirmation: Thank the donor for their gift.
New Recurring Schedule: Send a confirmation that a new recurring schedule has been started.
Upcoming Charge: Notify the donor 7 days before their payment method is processed.
Successful Recurring Charge: Send a notice to donors that their recurring gift was successful.
Failed Recurring Charge: Send a notice to donors that their recurring gift was unsuccessful.
Updated Recurring Schedule: Send a confirmation of changes made to a recurring schedule.
Cancelled Recurring Schedule: Send a confirmation that a recurring schedule has ended.
Acknowledgement: Send a note in honor or in memory of a tribute.

No matter which email template you choose, the same basic steps apply after that:

Setup
Build

Setup

During Setup you’ll name your new template, customize the email subject, and optionally choose who the email is from.

Build

During the Build step, you will customize the content of the body of the email. Depending on which template you chose, a default row of content will appear that can be customized to your liking. Add or remove rows that will contain various types of content. Choose from content options such as images, buttons, social media links, etc.

In addition to customizing the content in each row of your template, navigate additional settings to adjust the width, alignment, and color options.

To further more specific aspects of each row and content block, select a row or content block and then even more customization options will appear to the right.

General Options and Style Settings

While you can adjust the style settings for individual rows and content blocks, there is also a General Options and Style Settings menu that controls the entire email template. In the upper right hand corner of the email builder you will see a paint icon. Click this icon to open this style menu.

These General Options include a Style guide to universally control the content area width, alignment and advanced color settings. In addition to that, a default font can be established as well. It’s important to note that all of these style options are controlled by the Design Settings inside the main Settings menu. The Default Font option listed in this General Options menu, for example, is based on the Font Family chosen in the main Design Settings menu. See the article on Settings for more information about managing these system-wide settings.

Preview and Publish

Once you have completed setting up and building your email template, you are almost ready to publish your new email template. Before doing that, it is always a good idea to preview the final results.

Next to the general options and style icon is an eye icon to preview your email template. The preview option allows you to view your email template from a desktop screen perspective or a mobile screen. Use this preview feature before publishing your template to ensure that it looks the way you want, but also feel free to use it during the build process to make necessary changes as you go.

Now that you have previewed your new email template, it’s time to publish! Remember, this is just a template that will be used for other tools in RaiseDonors. In the top right corner of the page is a green button that says Save. At any point you can click it to save your current progress. If you’re ready to publish, click the drop down arrow next to that and Save and Publish.

Once you have saved and published your email template, it is ready to be used by the Fundraise tool or any other tool depending on which template you chose at the beginning of the process. After clicking Save and Publish, go back to your main RaiseDonors dashboard by click the logo in the top left corner of the page.

Set Your Email Template as a Default

Let’s say you just built a new donation confirmation email template and now you want it to be used as your organization’s default donation confirmation. To set this up, go to Email Settings by clicking the cog icon shown here:

Then scroll down to the “Default Email Templates” section. Under the Donation Confirmation dropdown, search for and select your template. Don’t forget to save your changes.

Assign Your Email Template to a Specific Page or Form

In RaiseDonors you can assign Donation Confirmation and New Recurring Schedule email templates at the Page/Form level. To do so, go to the Page/Form settings screen:

Here you will find a dropdown menu where you can assign a Confirmation Email and a Recurring Email:

Note: To configure which email notifications your donors and team receive, learn more about the Notifications Settings.